Green tree frog

green tree frog
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

One of the guys we've been watching out in the field. This guy hangs out around one of the pandanus plants we've been monitoring for activity of another species - the northern dwarf treefrog.

Photo note

Apologies about the quality of the recent photos I've posted - I recently upgraded some software and just discovered that there was a units issue when I cropped the photos. I'll be working on re-cropping and re-uploading soon.

A very blue crab

crab2
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Crab, with blue claws

crab
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Tidepool

tidepool
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I went for a walk along the ocean today and had a look through some of the tidepools. Interesting stuff in there.

Beer Can Regatta

Beer Can Regatta
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

The entrants for the annual Beer Can Regatta in Darwin. Most of these actually floated, and some worked quite well.

XXXX boat

XXXX boat
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

The XXXX entry into the annual Beer Can Regatta at Mindil beach in Darwin. Definitely the most impressive boat in the competition... until it got in the water. It was too big and bulky to go anywhere.

XXXX team

XXXX team
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

The XXXX team. I think they were working on shoring up the bulkhead for their boat by emptying some cans.

Beer can boat

beer can boat
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

One of the less flash entrants

Beer can boat

Beer can boat
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

The entry from one of the local pubs. They used empty kegs as pontoons. This boat seemed to be structurally sound, but they got a bit distracted by their plundering and swashbuckling.

Beer Can regatta

Beer Can regatta
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Testing the vessels on the surf in preparation for the start.

Beer Can regatta

Beer Can regatta
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

They're off. Only one boat sank immediately. The goal here is to try to find an object hidden in the water off the beach. The team that returns the object (or at least the biggest part of it) to the beach wins.

High seas hijinx

Beer can regatta
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Seems the teams from rival pubs in town had a bit of piracy going on to try to distract the other teams from the goal. These teams attacked each other with beer bombs, and pressurized beer. Seems like a terrible waste of beer, unless they used the empties to shore up the boat.

Beer can regatta

Beer can regatta
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Object found! Turns out to be a stubby cooler in a large yellow container. Note the great speed with which the leading team was returning to the beach. The contest was, of course, well supervise by the local surf lifesaving club.

Beer can baby

Beer can baby
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

One of the other events of the day was the "Henley on Mindil", where teams of 4 race their "land yachts" up the beach. I think the little guy in the foreground was speeding his way toward the nearest VB.

Henley on Mindil

Henley on Mindil
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

The winners of the Henley on Mindil. (Note that team 1 was on the verge of capsizing in the background)

Robin Falls

Robin Falls
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

One of my field sites, about 1 1/2 hours south of Darwin

Steve at Mickett Creek

Steve at mickett
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Steve surveying the land at the Mickett Creek field site. Above him is a hollow used by a green tree frog.

black cockatoos

black cockatoos
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

We had a big mob of red-tailed black cockatoos on campus a couple of weeks ago. Impressive birds, especially when there are a hundred or so of them.

Low tide pillars

Low tide pillars
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

Pillars of oysters at low tide in the flats outside my apartment.

Beer Can Regatta

This weekend was pretty interesting. On Saturday, Sarah and I went to one of my field sites at Robin Falls. It's about an hour and a half south of Darwin, and is a nice, hilly spot to spend the afternoon and evening. We went down in the afternoon, and had a bit of a walk around. I hadn't spent much time up above the falls, so we climbed up there and walked around a bit. Unfortunately, a lot of that area had burned earlier in the year, so it was not terribly interesting. The stream below the falls, did prove to be quite interesting though. During the day, we saw one native species of frog, Litoria meiriana, which is a tiny little thing that hangs around the near the water's edge, and behind the falls. Unfortunately, we also saw several cane toads hanging around in the moist crevices along the rock faces. They've been there for about 2 wet seasons now, and I hadn't been to the site since they arrived, so I wanted to see how the native frogs were doing.

We hung around until dark and walked the path again. We managed to find another 4 species of native frogs (L. nasuta, L. wotjulumensis, L. coplandi, L. pallida), which is most of what was there before toads. One species, L. tornieri, was mysteriously absent, but that could have just been that particular night. In fact, most of the natives were quite abundant. We also saw a few reptiles, one gecko (Gehyra australis), and a long-necked turtle (Chelodina rugosa), as well as two children's pythons (Antaresia childreni). Unfortunately, nighttime also brought out the toads in full force. Lots of cane toads there, including some very un-toadlike places like up the rock faces and hanging from fig roots (those toads looked pretty uncomfortable). At least there were still some reptiles and native amphibians around.

Sunday was the world famous Darwin Beer Can Regatta. The idea is that first you drink a lot of beer. Then you use the empties to make a boat. Then during the regatta these boats have a race to find a hidden object in the water. They are entirely human propelled (paddles, hands, swimmers tagging along behind, etc.), and most acutally float. Great fun, and truly a Darwin experience. It's a whole day event, including several beach contests, including thong tossing, 8-man tug of war, ironman contest (something to do with beer, I think), and a race where teams of four have to carry a PVC sailboat down the beach ("Henley on Mindil" race). Pictures will follow (they're on the other computer).

Sunday night we went to see the movie 10 Canoes. That's a new movie by Rolf de Heer, and is an aboriginal story, narrated by aborigines, written essentially by aborigines, and filmed entirely on location in Arnhem land. It's really a great movie, both because it's a great story, and because it really gives an idea of what aboriginal life is like. I highly recommend it if it comes to a theater near you. I'll probably buy a copy when it comes out on DVD.

Mid-July... ack!

It's hard to believe, but it's already mid-July. I can hardly believe that the year is going by so quickly. I suppose that means it has been a busy one, and that's certainly true. The last couple of weeks have been no exception. The fish guys wrapped things up last week and headed out of town. Then Keith also headed out of town for a holiday. He and the family are headed to Broome in Western Australia. Should be a nice trip, though a lot of driving. One of the results of them leaving is that they needed someone to take care of their dogs. Steve and I are splitting the duty, and I got the first shift. They have one small white female Jack Russell terrier, and one large black male doberman. Good combination, actually. So for the first part of the week I lived in luxury with the dogs.

The next interesting thing that has happened this week is that my new roommate, Sarah, arrived. She's only been here a few days, but so far it looks like things will work out fine. She's a new postdoc here at the university, working on a project on marine crustaceans. Fortunately, her background is in lizard evolution, so she's all right.

The last (and probably least interesting to anyone else) is that I managed to submit two small, internal grant proposals to CDU this week. One is for a project on physiology of endurance in cane toads. The other is for a project on digestive physiology and metabolic rate in crocodiles and alligators. That should be a fun one, if it ever happens.

3 black kites

3 black kites
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

These three guys, and about 50 of their friends, have been hanging around the mangroves behind my apartment for the last few weeks.

Martian?

Martian?
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I wonder if this is what it will look like when aliens invade Earth...

Mickett dust

Mickett dust
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

There are often a lot of hoons kicking up dust at our Mickett Creek site, especially on Sunday afternoons. The guy who kicked up all of this was a bit late for the party and didn't show up until Monday. One thing about hoons, the dust they kick up does make for some interesting lighting (if not for easy breathing, hearing, etc...)

There be dragons here!

Spiny-tailed gecko
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I found this guy last week while radio-tracking frogs. They aren't uncommon around here, but I'm still amazed when I find one. (Strophurus ciliaris

Grassfire remnants

Grassfire remnants
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

This is one of the victims of the Territory Day mayhem. When I came home from the fireworks on the beach, there was an eerie glow outside my apartment. In the morning it was revealed as the remnants of this fire.

Apartment from sand flat

Apartment from sand flat
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I've posted a lot of photos looking out over the ocean from my apartment, so I thought it was time to show one from the other direction. I walked out through the mangroves and onto the tidal flat that you've seen before. This is from about a third of the way out, looking back at my apartment (if you can see it, it's the building with the red strip on it. The smoke in the background is from a fire on the university campus. No buildings were affected, but there are now some pretty exposed terrmite mounds around.

Foreign invasion

Yikes, we're being innundated with visitors here. So, we've had the 5 fish physiologists around for 2 weeks (from British Columbia, New Zealand, Adelaide (2), and Melbourne). Today, two other colleagues arrives suddenly from Denmark and Sydney. The one from Denmark wasn't supposed to be here for 3 weeks, and the one from Sydney wasn't supposed to be here until sometime in August. Needless to say, there wasn't much space in the lab today. The fish guys have a water flume set up and are measuring all sorts of things with very sophisticated equipment that goes ping. Actually, one of their machines goes woosh - it uses doppler radar to measure the blood flow in the aorta of an air-breathing fish. They also have a nearly invisible (small) gizmo that measures oxygen concentration in the air bladder of these fish. The guy from Denmark has anther gadget that measures the oxygen consumption of ants that live in hollow mangrove sticks, and that get submerged twice a day. This thing can actually measure respiration in an individual ant. The guy from Sydney has every snake marked in an extremely dense population found about an hour from Darwin that he's been tracking for about 20 years. It's certainly been interesting having all these guys around, but it would have been nice to space them out a bit.

Also this week, we've been meeting with the crocodile guys about getting that project going. We're still trying to figure out how to put an oxygen mask on an animal that is 4.5m long and weighs 600kg (and has a mouth big enough to swallow us whole). We meet tomorrow to work out mroe details on this.

Yesterday, I was informed that as of today, there will be someone else sharing my office. Turns out the guy in charge of space has known about this for "a few months" but didn't bother to tell me until today because he "didn't know exactly when she'd be here." I had almost bought that (not really that close though) until I realize that this person was coming all the way from... Darwin. Yup, she's been filling in for lectures in the trades part of the university for the last several years. I should also mention that my office is a comfortable size for one person, but quite cramped for two, particularly if either has any stuff to go in the office (I had it comfortably filled until yesterday). It will be interesting to see how this works. (I should point out that I have nothing inherently against sharing, or the new person, but the process by which I was (not) informed has be a bit steamed, particularly since I've been in my own office for all of the nearly 4 years I've been here.)

Territory day

Today was quite an interesting day. It began with a trip to Crocodylus Park to have a look at some facilities there. We're thinking about starting up a project on crododile physiology, and have been talking with Graeme Webb at the park. It should be a fun project if it gets off the ground. One of the things we want to do is measure resting oxygen consumption. Now, that sounds easy, until you have a face to face look at a 4.5m croc that weighs 600kg and try to imagine either putting a mask on the thing, or making an airtight caget to hold it. Very big animals. We'll meet again later in the week to talk about whether this thing will fly or not.

The other interesting thing about today was Territory Day (aka Cracker Night). So, Territory day is supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the NT becoming self-governing (meaning that it has its own territory government, and was no longer under the direct control of Canberra). It's the only day of the year when it is legal to shoot off fire crackers and in theory it is only legal to launch them in certain areas and only between 6-11pm (hence Cracker Night). The whole thing is an amazing experience, so it is hard to know where to begin. When I went to the park this morning, I saw the first amazing site - firecracker stands had sprouted like mushrooms all over town. Now paired with the 5 hours of legal firecracker launching, is about 24 hours of legal fireworks selling. Every few blocks there was a new stand (with the same selection of course).

I'll digress a bit here and remind you that July is the middle of the dry season here. It hasn't rained since May, and right about now the huge biomass that grew up in the wet season is tinder dry. One might think that this would not be the best time to go about lighting fireworks, but there it is. Of course, much of the Top End has already burned this year, but it would be safe to say that the rest is in peril on Territory Day.

One of the places where it is legal to launch fireworks is Casuarina Beach. It is truly an amazing atmosphere. Imaging thousands of people showing up on a beach that is about 5km long and a few hundred meters wide (depending on the tide, which I'll get back to later). Starting as soon as it is dark, most of those thousands of people start launching their fireworks. It's really an amazing site - fireworks going off in a strip along the beach as far as you can see. It makes an unbelievable noise, and a truly spectacular sight of flaming colors. Everywhere you look, things are exploding and launching screaming sparkles into the air. And the fireworks that are sold here are not just spinning flowers and meager roman candles - some of them are quite large and impressive. I managed to get some "bad boys" which launched about 15m in the air and exploded into red, purple or green flowers. And of course, every once in a while, something would go off that would rattle the cliffs and cause everyone to pause and go "whoa, that was a big one". Some of the things lit must have been professional or at least modified a bit from the fireworks stands.

I went down to the beach with Keith's family, the family of a marine sponge taxonomist recently arrived at the Museum and the fish physiologists who are in town for a few weeks (5 guys from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand studying physiology of an air-breathing fish - they descend on us about once a year and set up some incredibly sophisticated experiments in Keith's lab, including using doppler radar to measure blood pressure in the aorta, or using a 4 micron optode implanted in the swim bladder to measure oxygen concentration after they take a breath). Anyway, we went down to the beach and launched some bees, some roman candles and some 'bad boys'.

Of course, part of the atmosphere includes the inherent danger of not knowing when they group next to you has lit something, or what they are launching. And of course there is the question of whether they have pushed the base far enough into the sand that the spinning, flaming explosives will launch into the air instead of into the next group. One particular type seemed prone to falling over tonight. One of ours tipped over and launched a bunch of exploding balls into our own group. Tim had one bit bounce off his leg and explode in golden glory (no damage done). Then 10 minutes later, the group next to us had the same problem, with about 5 consecutive exploding bits screaming into their group (no obvious injuries from what we could see). Another interesting atmospheric component is the tide at Casuarina beach. Turns out that the tide was coming in between 7 and 11pm, so we periodically had to pack up everything and move farther up the beach, as the water would sneak up and threaten to innundate us and the errant fire balls. For those of you not familiar with Darwin tides, they are quite large - tonight the difference between low and high tides was 3m - and the beach has a very shallow slope, so the water can move up the beach very quickly.

After we'd exhaused our pyrotechnics, and retired to Keith's place for cake, I went home through the haze. Every year I'm amazed that the entire city is shrouded in smoke on Cracker night. And not much of it is from the many bush fires started by the fireworks. Most is directly from the fireworks. Amazing.

Of course, tomorrow I expect the newspaper to be filled with accident statistics and outraged residents complaining that cracker night should be stopped next year. That furor should last about a week, then everyone will get on with things again.